How often do we hear the arguments of why or why we shouldn’t consume dairy? Heaps yeah? Have you ever stop to think about the argument? Is it based on your own beliefs, ethics, moral, medical reasons or are they based on science? Does it matter?

How does one prove or disprove if we are meant to consume dairy? Ever wondered about the history of dairy and how it came about? I don’t want to get into the whole it’s all about what they have done to the milk, I really want to talk about the evolutionary aspect.

Some of us can and do drink it and some don’t and cannot, no one is right or wrong. Consume it or don’t consume it doesn’t matter to me! We are all unique.

Let me ask you this…If we were not “meant” to drink it why did lactase persistence spread so quickly? There must have been some evolutionary advantageous reason for this surely?

The reason that really gets my goat is the one we are not “meant” to consume it, whatever that means…according you who, cause you say so? What are you basing this off, and of course they say we are the only mammals who drink milk after weaning, but that is not true either. We are supposed to be the most intelligent mammal and hopefully have intelligent arguments. Most mammals do not have the capacity to get the milk for a start, yes they can suckle but they don’t have opposable thumbs to actually milk! and if they did they would drink it!

In southern Europe, lactase persistence is relatively rare — less than 40% in Greece and Turkey. In Britain and Scandinavia, by contrast, more than 90% of adults can digest milk. So why do we have lactase persistence if we weren’t “meant” to consume it??? Did evolution screw this up? Think about it. It was advantageous to have it. Why? Will talk more about this later.

Most mammals lose the ability to digest the milk sugar lactose after weaning because of an irreversible reduction in expression of the intestinal enzyme lactase. This pattern is also seen in most humans, but some continue expressing lactase throughout adult life [lactase persistence (LP)]. This trait is common in populations of northern and central European descent and shows intermediate frequencies in southern and Eastern Europe. Africa and the Middle East show a more complex distribution.

It has been suggested that the modern frequency of LP in Europe is the result of a relatively recent and strong selection process. Although not fully understood, the biological advantages of LP probably include the continuous availability of an energy- and calcium-rich drink that enables a farming community to overcome poor harvests. This gene is quite recent and spread pretty rapidly which in turn means in must have conferred an advantage strongly selected for by evolution.

Given that dairying in the Middle East started thousands of years before the LP allele emerged in Europe, ancient herders must have found ways to reduce lactose concentrations in milk. It seems likely that they did so by making cheese or yogurt. (Fermented cheeses such as feta and cheddar have a small fraction of the lactose found in fresh milk; aged hard cheeses similar to Parmesan have hardly any.)

Milk fat on pottery in the Middle Eastern Fertile Crescent going back at least 8,500 years offers clear evidence that herders in Europe were producing cheese to supplement their diets between 6,800 and 7,400 years ago. By then, dairy had become a component of the Neolithic diet.

That next step happened slowly, and it seems to have required the spread of lactase persistence. The LP allele did not become common in the population until sometime after it first emerged. Mutations in samples of ancient human DNA and has found it only as far back as 6,500 years ago in northern Germany.

As Middle Eastern Neolithic cultures moved into Europe, their farming and herding technologies helped them to out-compete the local hunter-gatherers. As the southerners pushed north, the LP allele started spreading.

Lactase persistence had a harder time becoming established in parts of southern Europe, because Neolithic farmers had settled there before the mutation appeared. But as the agricultural society expanded northwards and westwards into new territory, the advantage provided by lactase persistence had a big impact. 


http://www.pnas.org/content/104/10/3736.full

http://www.nature.com/articles/444994a.epdf?referrer_access_token=NLA4FwTlh-mMI_lwfVOM69RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MRvufNXHoEGLk6ZU8DP3s-R2v5h9VGsTK0nDNZfbXFEuNt4bRT8HYRCdzdiG-D7IhzyReq3OEZ8LiG13HyGUr_aRqJ-6q3rSp7VWCTM1CZRNxSDESwmuaB_Oujm5pTLTFqYDgkUvNd5agXh88FWWU7&tracking_referrer=www.nature.com

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15114531?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg

 The answer is neither or both, confused?

Firstly there are many cultures around the world who have a high carb diet. In fact if you look at the worldwide chart (in the comments) you will see that there are many high carb eating people around the world. Most of them are over 60% of their daily intake as carbs, some are as high as 80%! What you might find very interesting is the US has 49% of their calories as carbs, the UK has 50% as carbs, and Australia 46%, which are the lowest around the world! And yet they’re some of the fattest and sickest nations, yes?

Hmmmmm….So do carbs in themselves make you fat according to % of carbs in your diet, or is it your absolute amount of carbs, or is it the total amount of calories consumed altogether? or is it the type of carbs, such as added sugars?(in which you may eat more) Are the fatter countries moving less? How is gut flora comparison?

Another comparison is calories consumed worldwide, US tops it at 3770 calories per day(161g fat) followed by Austria at 3760 cal (163g fat). So going by these charts would you take away from this that we are fat because we eat too much and that macronutrient per se doesn’t matter? Yeah I would. Just to note there doesn't appear to be any countries who are generally LCHF.

Most of Africa isn’t known to be a fat nation. Highest caloric intake is South Africa at 2990(65% carbs). 70% of adult South African women and nearly 40% of men are overweight or obese.

The lowest amount of calories goes to the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 1590 (80% carbs)

I tracked down heath info and found that 1.9% of the Congo have a BMI over 30 and the average BMI is 21. Wait a minute….. so you mean to tell me the Congo have a high % of carbs compared with South Africa yet are slimmer? Can I remind you that the people in the Congo are eating 1590 calories compared to 2990 calories in South Africa. Could it be they are slimmer because they eat less perhaps? Well if you went by carb % alone you would think that they would be fatter, right? I mean 80% diet as carb would have the LCHF enthusiasts spinning! But you also could to take into consideration what the absolute number of carbs is. Well the congo is eating 318g carbs a day and SA 486g carbs. So while SA IS eating more carbs they are also eating nearly twice the amount of calories the congo is eating even though the % of carbs is less.

The whole high carb thing making you fat is the foundation of their business so they might wish to stay in denial. Someone else might think maybe its not the carbs per se but the total energy intake, activity level, sex, age If you feel hungrier on carbs look at what the source of the carbs are, starch or sugar, refined or whole, fibre or no fibre? This makes a huge difference in appetite regulation, satiety and fullness.

So the question remains why is the US eating more than all other nations and are one of the fattest nations than everyone else in the world, yet they have one of the lowest carb intake in the world and carbs are “suppose” to make you fat?

My thought are this

If your diet has a lot of foods that are high glycemic load foods or refined processed foods, yes, including soft drinks. (Energy dense and nutrient poor) Pretty much these are foods not just high in carbs but ALSO high in fat including trans fats and PUFA’s. These foods/drinks eaten in large amounts and/or often enough will give you high blood sugar and you will release more insulin to shuttle that glucose where it needs to go, and then your blood sugar levels will drop which can lead to low blood sugar due to the over compensation of insulin. So you crash and you may feel dizzy, faint, headaches and really hungry so you reach for a chocolate bar or biscuit or other refined product to quickly get that blood sugar level up so you will feel better and so the cycle begins. Add to this high cortisol levels from stress, and what does cortisol do? It plays an important role in glycogenolysis, the breaking down of glycogen to glucose and also increase blood sugar through gluconeogenesis. This is making glucose from non-carbohydrate carbon substrates such as pyruvate, lactate, glycerol, and glucogenic amino acids.

So you end up eating more, you eat more you get heavier, your chances of metabolic syndrome go up, you may become insulin resistant and when you are insulin resistant you have an abnormal response to carbohydrates AND fats, and then you have free fatty acids and lots of glucose in the blood that has nowhere to go. So the beta cells suffer oxidative stress and inflammation due to the high nutrient exposure and then eventually apoptosis or auto cell destruction. Then you have type 2 diabetes.

So you have stress and highly refined foods/drink products that don’t satisfy, have empty calories, so you may end up eating more due to rapid drops in blood glucose and the food is highly palatable which make it easier to eat more energy dense/low nutrient food. This is food that is convenient and its everywhere you go. Plus you may have stress in your life causing your body to make more glucose. Which perpetuates the cycle. I don’t see any of these refined foods taking up a space in the guidelines, stop blaming the guidelines! Most people are not even aware of a serving size or the amount of fat/sugar/energy a food has.

Calories do matter as you see in the charts, it doesn't mean you have to count them, and there probably isn't a county in Africa that counts calories. Listen to your body to amount it actual needs not the amount you want. It is ok to feel hunger! Those of you that practise intermittent fasting will know what real hunger is!

The macronutrients per se don’t matter, what does matter is what that macronutrient is made up of and if that macronutrient is satisfying your hunger and/or causing you too eat more. If you have a diet high in carbs, you have enough protein for your body and this way of eating doesn’t cause you to eat more and keeps you healthy then there is nothing wrong with this way of eating! Something interesting, there is only essential fatty acid deficiency. In the same way we can make glucose from other sources if we need to we can also make all the fat the body requires if we need to. Yes glucose can be made into palmitate, which is a saturated fat(so theoretically we don't need to eat saturated fats but i love bacon and butter so that isn't going to happen!) Our body is pretty smart!

Just eat real food and eat what is right for your body, if what you are eating isn't getting you where you want to be then change, you just may be surprised what other ways of eating may achieve for you. Aim for nutrient density not macronutrients.

The best diet is the one you adhere to, the one you like eating, satisfies you, keeps you healthy, and covers all your nutrients. These is no right or wrong here. Let’s stop blaming one macronutrient please and just focus on having a whole food diet. No one is saying don’t eat junk food, just be mindful, reduce the amount you have and also the frequency. There is a big difference in calories, fat and sugar in 2 tam-tams than there is a whole packet!

Do you know how much you are REALLY eating? and does your body actually need that amount? I support many different diets, from LCHF to paleo, to higher carb, to gluten free/dairy free, each person is an individual so let’s treat them as one and stop putting everyone the same box. What I don’t like is people either lying, not telling the whole truth or perhaps ignorance on not knowing any better just to suit their agenda. Not cool!

http://chartsbin.com/view/1154

https://www.quandl.com/c/congo/congo-health-data

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21604223-doctor-says-its-time-slim-down-much-too-fat

http://chartsbin.com/view/1160

http://chartsbin.com/view/1156

Food is meant to be just fuel for us, but as we all know food is so much more than this….what I notice is food being labelled as bad and we shouldn't not go near it and may evoke a sense of guilt that we should eat it as it isn't nourishing enough or it has too much sugar etc…

Take a bowl of pasta for example…you think of this as not nourishing for us, a food made of flour and eggs, something to avoid. However what about thinking of food as nourishing the soul?  I think of people with Italian background, as little kids who used to make fresh pasta with their nonnas, picking and preparing the tomatoes for the pasta sauce, stirring the sauce together and being in the garden and putting your face in a bunch of basil and smelling the aroma of it…..picking the basil and throwing it in the pasta sauce…but now pasta seems to be such a cuss word…to be honest it makes me a little sad that we can no longer enjoy the occasional bowl of pasta without the voices (and face bookers) in our heads telling us this is bad, this has little nutrition etc…it’s not all about the nutrition sometimes!!

1 bowl of pasta (or insert a not so nourishing food here) does not equal an unhealthy diet just as 1 salad does not make a healthy diet. Can we not just eat for joy? For memories? Because we like it? We want it? It is your overall dietary pattern that makes your diet a good one. The best diet is one that you enjoy, you embrace, one that you can stay on for the rest of your life.

This is a page about enjoying your food, embracing new flavours, trying new cooking techniques, finding new foods to try, trying new recipes, making things you have never made before, making small changes along the way, making better changes, it isn’t a paleo page, it isn’t a low fat page, its not a page about being 100% perfect with your diet and then you screw up and feel massively guilty about it. Yes, food is fuel, food should be able to nourish you….but food is more than that. When we celebrate there is food, birthdays there is food, Christmas there is food, funerals there is food, and everything we do is evolved around food. Even in cultures around the world we see the same thing everyone coming together, spending time together, laughing together, cooking together and just enjoying what they are eating without some tribe member making them feel ashamed for eating that coal roasted turtle brain or whatever! There are plenty of other pages around that are straight up, never eat this, never eat that, this way is the only way of eating etc…do not come here and criticise my food choices just because you choose not to eat them. You can go somewhere else and do that. This is wholefood, nutrition, information, cooking page for everyone to come and enjoy. Information I present is not to be taken in place of medical advice nor is it about anyone feeling guilty or ashamed. You can read my posts and decide for yourself what you want to do with it.

You only need to watch certain cooking shows where contestants have beautiful memories of food with their loved one, remind them of a special time they had together, a moment in time that they always cherish, so many emotions, tears…how powerful are these memories and smells?!?! We don’t need to take that away, we need common sense and a diet that contains mostly whole foods. Some people will need to be more careful what they eat than others. That is just how it is.

A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people's moods and even affect their work performance. Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it's sometimes called the "emotional brain," smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously.

The olfactory bulb has intimate access to the amygdala, which processes emotion, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for associative learning. Despite the tight wiring, however, smells would not trigger memories if it weren't for conditioned responses. When you first smell a new scent, you link it to an event, a person, a thing or even a moment. Your brain forges a link between the smell and a memory -- associating the smell of chlorine with summers at the pool or lilies with a funeral. When you encounter the smell again, the link is already there, ready to elicit a memory or a mood. Chlorine might call up a specific pool-related memory or simply make you feel content. Lilies might agitate you without your knowing why. This is part of the reason why not everyone likes the same smells.

Because we encounter most new odours in our youth, smells often call up childhood memories. But we actually begin making associations between smell and emotion before we're even born.

Should we be labelling food good and bad?  Does this help form a healthy relationship with food?

For example a fullfat organic yoghurt with say 15g sugar per serve…now some will say well theres a lot of sugar in there not a good choice. Too much sugar compared to what?  Some will say well what about the rest of this persons diet? What are their goals, what are their health issues? When you access a food in regards to eating it you have to consider the big picture not just how high the sugar content is before you cast something out. Perhaps a lower sugar option might be better but it’s not necessary to cut out all sugar from your diet, doing that may have someone craving sugar and may end with and unhealthy relationship with food, perhaps you might become obsessed about it?  It is always about context, the quantity and how often sugar is consumed.

But overall the person who eats this has a low sugar diet and they like the idea of yoghurt but don’t like taste of natural yoghurts. No blood sugar issues, no fatigue etc so keep eating the yoghurt unless you have a reason not to have it. Always look at their overall diet and symptoms, not just singling out one item. A suggestion might be to get the natural yoghurt and just add your own honey or maple to taste.

This shits me to no end!
Whenever there is a high carb food (lets say it’s porridge ) mentioned there are always those people that say

 x amount of carbs/grains = sugar

What do you think about this how does this statement make you feel? freaked out?

I say…” So what” This statement makes me feel…. humoured in a sense… I usually feel puzzled as well… like they are comparing a bowl of porridge/grains to a bowl of sugar and thinking they are the same thing. Hmmmm, that’s a sad and weird way to look at food.

Well what is the difference you say?  All carbs get broken down to glucose so all carbs are just a bowl of sugar, pretty simplistic huh? No so fast.  When nature made carbs she puts the “antidote” with it. An exception may have been honey and other unprocessed sugars we have always eaten. Now what do I mean by this?

Some people describe carbs as “poison” and some carbs if eaten in large enough quantities might be poison. But mother nature gets her sources of carbs and makes sure there is the antidote which is fibre and/or fat/and/or protein…so we think potatoes they have fibre, we think oats there is fibre, protein and fat, we think fruit we have fibre. Fibre and fat and protein they slow down the absorption of glucose and/or give volume or raise glucagon. Glucagon works the opposite to insulin; this guy works in between meals and signals your liver to make glucose to keep blood sugar in a normal range.  There are a lot of other hormones involved in things like appetite control, hunger signals, fat storage etc… not just insulin and glucagon.

When foods such as grains are processed to death the antidote is taken away and all you are left with is the starch, which will make your blood sugar levels skyrocket! All the nutrition is taken out pretty much. Not to mention the unrefined food contain many vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients as well as can still have the fibre and fat- these carbs are NOT the same as a bowl of sugar and anyone that thinks it is…well….that’s their prerogative. It makes me feel like they are a carb phobe and thinks that carbs are unhealthy or something!  Or just plain doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand.

We all know that carbs raise blood sugar and therefore raise insulin levels. And some carbs raise it more than others. Amino acids (proteins) and some fatty acids don’t raise blood sugar but DO raise insulin. For example fish and beef raise insulin more than pasta, all bran and porridge! Generally porridge is a lowish gi food, the finer the oats the higher the gi rating (quick oats) so it won’t raise it as much as say, rice bubbles or cornflakes, and if you some “antidote” like coconut milk, butter, chia seeds etc…  then you can slow down the rate of absorption.

A person who has a normal response to glucose will have no problems using the glucose from a high carb meal, production of using fat as fuel will be shut down so the glucose can be used as energy or stored, then between meals it’s back to using fat. Of course (hopefully) you have a nice big fast from dinner to breakfast or whenever your next day meal is and this gives your body an opportunity to use stored glucose (glycogen from your liver/muscles and fat from your fat cells (adipocytes) Post meals spikes in insulin are a normal response to a meal and do not give you type 2 diabetes unless they are chronically elevated and insulin never gets a chance to go back to baseline or your liver is making too much glucose raising your blood sugar levels this way (there can be other factors involved as well)

Some will be full till lunch with porridge and some wont, it will depend on your individual response to glucose as well as what it is served with, the amount and the type of carbs consumed, the way I see if it aint broke then don’t fix it. If what you eat isn’t getting the results you are after then change it, don’t keep doing the same things over and expecting a different result! Eat to what suits YOUR body.

If you need any help with your eating then contact me today to make your appointment!  Available in person or by skype/email